State Archery Tournament

Our middle daughter is the archery "pro" in our family.  The other two kids can't let her do this alone so they participate as well.  Our son is pretty good but archery isn't his favorite sport; baseball is.  Our other daughter loves to shoot for fun.

Archery is a "team" sport in that you will often practice with a team and in some tournaments your team gets points or "credit" for your wins.  Other than that it is very much an individual sport.

Only girl on the line. Respect the pony tail!

We got involved in competitive archery last fall when our middle daughter wanted to shoot competitively.  We got her on a JOAD team in the area.  JOAD is part of USA Archery and is the team that goes to the Olympics.  JOAD stands for Junior Olympic Archery Development.  Basically, the JOAD teams are made up of kids under 20 years old and USA Archery look at these teams as a development program to feed into the Olympic teams.  We have met several kids who go a couple times a year to work with the Olympic trainers.  These kids are being groomed to be on the USA Olympic team eventually.  We aren't there yet.  :)

Anyway, our middle daughter started working with the JOAD team here in town last fall.  Her second practice was a "pin shoot" where they shoot in tournament style for points and they earn pins for progression.  These scores are saved for the team as a way to strive for higher scores.  At this pin shoot, our daughter broke a team record.  A few more practices in and I had a conversation with her coach.  The coach said that she couldn't help our daughter progress any further and that we should look for another coach to help her move further.  After that we began to use the team practices as an other time for practice only.  Her coach there didn't assist our daughter and frankly, ignored her for the most part.

Moving on, we found an awesome coach for her and they began working together in November.  They hit it off well and our daughter has progressed along quite well.  Her first tournament in December, she came in second.

At Christmas the other two wanted bows.  Santa obliged and they all began working with our private coach. (who also happens to have been homeschooled)

Last weekend was the Virginia State Indoor Championships.  It happened to be held not too far from us.  Of course the middle daughter wanted to compete as well as our son.  This would be his first tournament.

Waiting for the tournament to begin.

It was a two day tournament.  Our shoot time was the second day.  Our daughter was pretty confident she would do well.  Our son was out for the fun of it.  Our motto, "Every one (arrow) counts!"

It was a good shoot and both did very, very well.  Our daughter shot the best she has ever shot and our son, as we figured, survived the shoot and didn't quit.  He had fun.

When it came time for the awards, our son's division came first.  We were surprised to hear his name called for 2nd runner up! (That is third place)

And our daughter took 1st runner up! (Second place)

So now you know!